The Ethics of Lockdown: Communication, Consequences, and the Separateness of Persons

Are lockdown measures ethically justified? This paper outlines some of the key issues relevant to answering that question, paying particular attention to how decisions are framed. Section 1 argues that ethical reasoning about lockdown ought to be guided by a distinction between prudential and ethical reasons, grounded in a concern to respect the separateness of persons, but also that—as public health messaging implies—it can be unclear whether measures are in individuals’ prudential interests or not. Section 2 suggests that a similar set of problems affect attempts to adopt alternative cost-benefit-analysis frameworks for assessing lockdown. Section 3 suggests an answer to these shared problems: we need a process for determining when wellbeing claims and systems of categorization are ethically apt. Section 4 argues that settling the question of aptness is our key ethical task in assessing lockdown.